Not Tonight (or Ever)
by Skies-of-Gallifrey
Summary: The events of New Earth have left Rose with her eyes on the Doctor, who does not reciprocate her advances.


Rose hadn't felt that way in a very long time. The events of the hospital had left her shaken at first, as was custom with their travels, but now that the shock had worn off… She was left… lacking.

The Doctor was tinkering under the console when she walked in, at the sound of her footsteps he straightened. The loud clang of his head hitting the rim of the console almost drowned out his yelp of pain. He rubbed his injured skull and beamed at her.

"Feeling better?" he asked, she smiled back at him.

"Yep." She surreptitiously looked him up and down, properly this time.

Cassandra was right, he was foxy and she most certainly liked it.

"Whatcha doing?" she perched herself on the seat and watched him bend over to retrieve some tool or other.

"Readjusting some of the settings for guidance control." He placed the slender tool back into a silver toolbox that was precariously balanced on two levers. "I'm a bit more delicate with the controls now, so unless you want me to miss every destination by seven hundred years and twenty parsecs, adjustments have to be made. The thing is…" Rose stopped paying attention to his words and just listening to his lilting voice race along the words at breakneck speed like a stallion.

She ran her tongue over her teeth as he moved again, and she wondered whether that "delicacy" he spoke of was as applicable somewhere else. She tried to reason with herself and tried to see him as the same man in the leather jacket she'd met a few months ago. But that thought did nothing to quell the unstoppable urges bubbling in her gut.

She remembered when Cassandra kissed him, she had barely suppressed that urge, and now it was back. Rose took a shuddering breath and hopped off the chair.

"I just hope my aim isn't too bad this time, I got to New Earth on the first go, so that's good news. Have I ever told you I once spent months trying to get this one girl to Heathrow Airport? It cost her her job, I really should've been more careful, but it's not like she really wanted to leave any way, she came back… Well, until-" he stopped, "Rose? Are you alright?"

"More than." She sidled closer to him, "More than…" she placed a hand on his shoulder. She felt him recoil slightly from her touch.

"Rose… what are you doing?" She enunciated slowly as he eyed her suspiciously.

"Cassandra was right." She wedge herself between him and the console. For a moment his body was pressed against hers, but he backed away. "I do like it."

"Like what?" his uncertainty made his breath catch in his throat as she pulled him closer.

"You." She smiled and pushed him into the chair, he toppled over easily.

"What?" he breathed

"Don't act so confused…" she grinned as she straddled his lap "You kissed Cassandra back." She leaned forward "You can kiss me." She whispered in his ear as she brought her hands up to undo his tie for him.

"Rose please." He said firmly and untangled himself from her before gently lifting her onto a seat next to him while he scooted to the side, "Can we not do this?"

"Why not?" she shrugged, following him to his side of the bench "Scared?"

"No it's just." He pushed himself further towards the edge of the seat "I'm not…"

"Not what?" she edged even closer. The need to be near him was positively burning now.

"Comfortable!" he leaped from the bench to his feet and took a step back, "Rose, I ask you to understand that I am not human. Your customs and mine are quite dissimilar."

Rose examined the panicked look on his face, she sat more soberly on the padded bench.

"Thank you." He breathed and appeared to calm down. "Now I have some adjustments to finish. If you could- refrain- from… You know…" he didn't finish his sentence before he picked up another nameless piece of equipment from the tool box and ducked beneath the console again.

Rose watched him work for another minute before getting bored, not just bored, left hanging, it was even worse now. She glanced at him and the only image that came to mind was a fantasy of him, and her, in a dimly lit room,…

Suddenly he stopped and turned around to face her.

"Rose please." his voice almost sounded pained now "I can feel your gaze on the back on my neck, and I know what you're thinking."

"What, can you read my mind?" she murmured, delighted that he was talking to her.

"Yes I can." He stated bluntly.

"Kinky." She grinned.

"No it isn't." he got up and closed up the toolbox. "You're not exactly keeping your- desires- to yourself." He fiddled with one of the latches.

"So you know what I want." She started to get up.

"No, you stay seated." He held out a hand to stop her, she was surprised by his sudden show of formality and defensiveness, "Rose, I very much like your species, but this is one aspect I do not want to explore further." He picked up the toolbox and went to put it back wherever he stored it. Rose followed him.

"Why not?" her curiosity was mingled in with her arousal now. Oh God, she just wanted to have at him, to touch him and for him to touch her. The image alone made her shiver.

"Because, no offense, but it's very- primal." He faced her to gage her reaction, she dared him to do his worst "It's an animal desire, one that my kind had left behind a long time ago."

"I don't believe you." She said. What he was saying was ridiculous, how can any living species not have a desire to reproduce? "You're here aren't you? You came into the world somehow." She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

"I did, through a device called a loom." He explained, pushing her aside to be able to pass back into the central area of the console. "I wasn't born Rose, no Time Lord is."

"What?" she was shocked. "So you don't…" she gestured not-so-vaguely.

He bristled at her very blunt non-evasion, "Most of us- didn't." he paused before using the past tense, he voice was strained in pain. "Some did, but not many."

"Not you?"

"Not me." He said "If you're quite finished, I'd like to test a few of these corrections. If you're still- active- I'd ask you to please take your business somewhere else."

Rose realized that their conversation had had the side effect of making any and all ideas of the dimly lit room with scented candles wither into nothing. Of course she still though him very attractive and the idea of shagging him senseless wasn't completely gone, but it just wasn't… immediate. Right now all she could think of was of how sad his society must be, he didn't have a family, not really, not in the sense that she did. He didn't have a mother or father or siblings or even children. Only people that came out of the same machine he did… She tried to picture a society like that, with some semblance of family. And failed.

He'd said his entire family was dead, that day where she tried to save her father, but what had he meant by that? That question was left unanswered, but she'd seen the pain in his eyes, and she knew that, whatever he had meant, it had meant a lot.


End file.
